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Money Guy Show
Don’t Fall For These Market Trends with Austin Hankwitz
01:08:32
Ask Money Guy | February 24th, 2026
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- [00:00]
Austin Hankwitz
Foreign.
- [00:07]
Brian Preston
We got a special one coming for you today. Don't fall for these market trends.
- [00:12]
Bo Hanson
Brent, I am so excited because today we have a very special guest. We have Austin Hankwitz, who's a finance content creator, an entrepreneur, an investor, all things finance. Austin, thanks so much for hanging out with us today.
- [00:26]
Austin Hankwitz
Thanks for having me. I'm so excited to be here.
- [00:28]
Bo Hanson
Hey, that's my line.
- [00:29]
Austin Hankwitz
Come on, guys. No. I've lived in Nashville now for seven, eight years. Years. And I'm surprised we haven't done this sooner.
- [00:34]
Bo Hanson
I know. I love it. I love that you're here hanging out with us today.
- [00:37]
Brian Preston
I always like when things just fall into place like they're supposed to. And let me give you some scoop on this, Austin. I have a dear friend named Mark who kind of follows our content, and he's come to the studio, got some insight for how he should be working with his business and using social media. And he came to me, and this is probably. This was about a month ago, a month and a half, and he goes, hey, there's a guy who lives in our neck of the woods. His name is Austin. He has this. This podcast called Rich Habits Podcast. You ought to do something with him. So I then go to Ribi and I said, hey, my buddy who kind of has his pulse on things, says we should do something with this guy named Austin. And she goes, good news. He's already scheduled to come in. And I was like, this is my life. I live in this serendipitous type life where just everything. I stumble around and everything falls right into place.
- [01:28]
Austin Hankwitz
It all comes together.
- [01:29]
Brian Preston
Welcome to the show.
- [01:31]
Austin Hankwitz
Thank you so much. Rich Habits Podcast. It's been a blast. Very excited to be here.
- [01:35]
Bo Hanson
For those who don't know or maybe have not come across, give us a little background. Who are you? What do you talk about? How'd you get into the content creation game?
- [01:42]
Austin Hankwitz
Yeah. So, more about me. I'm 29. I turned 30 here in May. Graduated from the University of Tennessee. Go Vols. Back in.
- [01:51]
Bo Hanson
We can edit that part out.
- [01:52]
Austin Hankwitz
Okay. Back in 2018, got my degree in finance and economics. I moved to Nashville to do mergers and acquisitions for a large health care company. But I've always been this, like, weird money nerd. Weirdly enough, I credit it to Dave Ramsey. He came to my high school back when I was in high school to talk about the baby steps. And I was like, Whoa, Roth. Ira. This is interesting. I love that. I'm 16 years old learning about this stuff. It's insane. And so now fast forward call it 10, 12, 15 years after that, I've just always been intrigued about personal finance and investing. And so what happened was during the pandemic, instead of lip syncing and dancing on TikTok, I decided I was gonna talk about how I plan to pay off my student loans, grow my credit sc and invest toward my retirement. And so it wasn't like a, hey, you know, I was 24, right? It wasn't like a, hey, I'm some sort of expert. It was a, listen, I'm gonna make some mistakes, come along for the ride.
- [02:42]
Bo Hanson
Watch.
- [02:43]
Austin Hankwitz
People appreciated that. Yeah, 100%. And I think there's something to be said about radical transparency. And so that whole time I was like, listen, I've got a bunch of VOO right here. Here's what I've got inside this Roth ira. Here's how. Here's my credit cards that I'm trying to use to pay this one off, and here's how much I owe on my student loans. Come along for the journey, right? And people appreciated that. And so now, you know, fast forward years and years into it, I was doing this full time In March of 2021, started newsletters, podcasts, doing a lot of marketing consulting for fintech companies like Public.com and Charles Schwab and things like that. But then we also started investing into some, you know, pre IPO names as well along the way, which has been a lot of fun. But the Rich Habits podcast sort of was started in February of 2021 as a way for myself and my co host, Robert Croke, who shout out to Silly Bands. You guys know Silly Bands, those bracelets that maybe.
- [03:33]
Bo Hanson
Yeah, yeah.
- [03:34]
Austin Hankwitz
So he started Silly bands back in 2008, 2007. You didn't know that? Yeah.
- [03:39]
Brian Preston
Wow.
- [03:39]
Austin Hankwitz
So now $300 million of revenue later, and he's just having a good time now. He's 60, I'm 30. And we're just sharing our perspectives along the way. He's this sort of like, you know, elder statesman, entrepreneur, veteran. I'm a guy who's 30 years younger, trying to figure it out, trying to build my own business and invest the right way. And the show is made for anyone in between, right? You can be younger, you can be older, whatever. Any experience that you can just take back control of your money, make the right, you know, implement the right rich habits. And it's. It's been fun, man. It's been a lot of fun.
- [04:09]
Bo Hanson
I love that. So it's. It sounds like in a lot of. Of what you talk about, the Content you go through is like studying market trends and looking at that kind of stuff, right?
- [04:18]
Austin Hankwitz
I would say yes. But on the same token, like, you know that it's something to talk a lot about is, is it's important to have a active management perspective with your portfolio. Not so you're always making changes because no one can time the market, but because you can now go into whatever the market's doing with your eyes wide open. I think a lot of people make the mistake of saying I'm going to go diversify into some crypto or I'm going to go, you know, do this sector. I have no idea about them. When it goes down 30, 40%, they're surprised. And we want to make sure people like, if you are diversifying or if you are trying to do something with an asset class or some sort of strategy that's new to you, that you go into it eyes wide open where like, hey listen, this is the volatility that can come with it. And here's, you know, we're all just trying, trying to have that kind of perspective on what's moving the markets and how it might impact you and your money.
- [05:07]
Bo Hanson
So how do you reconcile that with like, so obviously you have this perspective, you want to be a little more active and know kind of what you're doing there, but also this idea of like passive investing, buying low cost index
- [05:16]
Brian Preston
funds because you already heard you say vu.
- [05:19]
Bo Hanson
Yeah, right. You like how, how do you marry those two concepts together?
- [05:24]
Austin Hankwitz
And I'm sure you guys have. I'm not, I didn't come up with the strategy. But it's, it's called the core satellite investing portfolio strategy. Right. So call it 65 to 85% of your portfolio is in the boring index funds and ETFs that we all love and talk about. But then the other 15 to 35% is diversified into things that are really interesting to you. If that is, hey, maybe I want to dabble in the dark arts of international stocks here, there, maybe I want to do a little cryptocurrency or some precious metals. Right. Gold and silver have been Oliver. So it's like having a little bit of mix, knowing that the vast majority of your portfolio and your net worth are in these tried and true index funds that are going to go up into the right over a long period of time. But if you do want to have a little bit of nibble, call it low single digits in some cryptocurrency, some bitcoin, like rock and roll, man, that's fine because the cool thing about it is if you experience that 40%, 70%, heck, it can go to zero if you've got 95% of your net worth over here and 5% of it goes to zero. Well, congrats, you still have 95% of your net worth. Right.
- [06:27]
Bo Hanson
So you're saying it's, it's more the, the extra. We have a friend of the show that says you want to do that kind of stuff with the vacation money, not with the grocery money. That's the way you want to sort of navigate that.
- [06:38]
Austin Hankwitz
Yeah, my friend Chris Camillo, I'm not sure if you guys know who he is. He's an incredible, incredible social arbitrage traders. Always with Graham and Jack on their show. He just did a great episode with them, I think two or three days ago. But Chris does a really good job explaining that if you want to have some of this sort of higher risk bucket, it should not come from your point the, the groceries, it comes from trade offs that you do throughout your life. Hey, I'm not going to go to Starbucks this week so I can save 3, 7, 10, 12, $15. And that 15 now goes to that higher risk idea, right? So it's not from the index fund money. It's not from things that are going to continue to allow you to build wealth over time. It's going to come from different trade offs or that side hustle or the, you know, whatever you're doing, it's money you wouldn't have had. Right?
- [07:21]
Bo Hanson
I'm super curious because you said one of the things that's been great about what your experience has been is you said, hey, come along for this ride with me. Come along and do this thing. Have there been investments that you've made or things that were interesting and unique to you? You're like, oh gosh, maybe that one was. Maybe instead of doing that, I should have just gone S and P 500 what's.
- [07:42]
Austin Hankwitz
Yes, absolutely. And I think a lot of people made this mistake, right? We rewind back to, to the COVID induced bubble we experienced in the stock market. And I think everyone knows or knew who Cathie Wood was, right? She had this, she was the darling of the stock market. She had the Arkk etf. It was like this big innovation fund. Everyone's talking about it, everyone's investing into it. And I was one of those. I was like, this is so cool. It's just going like crazy. These fun names are going off and then February of 2021 happens and it kind of does. One of these and it comes back down. You're like, oh, it's okay. It'll. It'll recover, I'm sure. Right? Rode that sucker all the way down. And it's one of those things where you one, it's, it's an opportunity to learn. Right. It's, it's in that high risk bucket. It's in that satellite side of the portfolio where it's like, okay, you know, this is money that, that was not taken from, you know, let's call it the S and P or the NASDAQ or things that go up into the. Right. Over a long period of time. But it's, I went into this with my eyes wide open, so I would say yes. And I think a lot of people also made this mistake of like, I'm excited. It's Covid. We're doing the, you know, the trades. Oh, Cathie Wood. Who's this person? Yeah, of course I'm going to ride into her etf. And then you realize that everything does not just go vertical forever. Right.
- [08:53]
Brian Preston
I love that you were talking about radical transparency and what's, what's interesting. I can tell you have a passion for it, but I always found it interesting because I've had neighbors that when they find out what I do for a living, before they really find out what I do for a living, they start telling me about their stock picks and other things and I've got one. I consider him a success case is because he came to me probably four to five years into our relationship with each other after he had moved next door. He's moved away since. He's like, you know what? I finally have caught on. He goes a lot of those things. When I was telling you about Fitbit and all the other stuff, I realized that the S and P just that when I look at my annual performance, that's what drove the majority. And that ties in what you're, what you're sharing. So a lot of when you get into the weeds with this, how much of this should be hobby. Like you get true excitement and it's entertainment and versus, you know, and you've already said with the core satellite. But I just want to know because that's the thing. I don't want people to lose out on the excitement because all human nature is. Is the shiny objects. Just like I can tell you I've heard more about silver in this year. You know, really from last year. You know, all the huge run up. Then I've heard from silver. So we always are. Literally. I can point to this is a shiny object that everybody's infatuated with right now because of just recency bias and what happened. But it is one of those things where at the end of the day, is there a core belief that kind of. Yeah, the index funds, if you don't find satisfaction in this, it's okay if you set it and forget it as well.
- [10:27]
Austin Hankwitz
It absolutely is encouraged to set it and forget it. It's not just okay. It's like, that's what you should be doing, like, full stop, like in your retirement accounts. Set it and forget it. This is not. You're not playing games with your retirement. Right. We don't want to play games with our nest egg. But something that I really enjoy explaining to people because you talked about, like, hobby and think about this. I'm a firm believer that. And I think Amazon's a great example for this. If you are someone that is shopping at Amazon a lot, you have a Costco subscription, maybe you have an American Express credit card, you know, insert publicly traded company here that you very intimately understand. I think it's okay to be an owner of companies where customers off. And I think that's powerful because at the end of the day, I think the stats like 90% of Americans are not owners in these. You know, do not own equity in the stock market. Like, they don't get to experience that upside. And if I'm able to explain to someone, like, hey, you might not understand the S and P, I get that you don't want to touch this stuff. You're intimidated by it, but you know how Amazon works. Yeah, I've got the app on my phone. I just bought something on it. Like, okay, cool. What if I could tell you that you could put as little as $10, right? A, you know, a slice of a stock into Amazon so you own a little bit of equity in the company that you're a customer of. And that's like a light bulb moment for a lot of people where it's like, okay, cool, so I'm no longer just a customer, but I'm now an equity owner in this company that's profiting off of me. And I think that that is just where everyone should start.
- [11:54]
Brian Preston
I do agree because I will say, look, if you do this long enough, I've been fortunate enough, I don't really do individual stocks, but I've been fortunate enough that I've had one or two products that I was so enamored with that I did go buy the stock. And then when they, when you ever have A holding that cross, a thousand percent return. You're like, that's a moonshot. It's like, holy cow, a little turns into something pretty incredible. But I just want people, I want you to not feel like you have to do it because I feel like sometimes young investors.
- [12:25]
Austin Hankwitz
Absolutely.
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Brian Preston
They don't know what to do with their first dollar, much less what to do with their bonuses. And we're trying to get them into Roth and just doing. That's where the financial order of operations kind of came from. But I just don't want people to feel pressure that they have to get into some of this stuff where that's probably not where you start the journey. You start the journey with the boring, tried and true. Don't put pressure on yourself. That doesn't need to exist. And then as you get deeper, definitely, if you find a passion for it, go for it. Look for the permanent portfolio type investments. But I love, you're very transparent on that and I appreciate you being so open with us.
- [13:00]
Austin Hankwitz
Yeah, no, absolutely. And you mentioned the hobby aspect of it too. It's so funny. I don't think people have the time to do all of the research that they should do before owning a single stock, Right. Or should do before they go own some sort of thematic ETF or, you know, a precious metal or something. And honestly, I don't think people want to go do without research. Right. So it's like at the end of the day, just go buy the index funds, go buy the vus of the world and yeah, Dow Jones, Industrial Average, all that stuff, like, just go ride the wave.
- [13:31]
Bo Hanson
Well, I think, I think what ends up happening is people, they think, okay, I'm going to do this thing, I'm going to go buy this stock that I'm interested in, or I want to start playing in one of these little. But then what ends up happening is it begins to captivate your attention, right? Like, even though you have 95% of your stuff over here doing this boring old stuff, you're paying attention to this 3%, 5% thing. So one thing that we have to do as investors is figure out, okay, when it comes to like, things going on in the financial world, how do we discern between the things that are like, actually newsworthy that we should be paying attention to and what's the noise? What are the distractions? What are the things that we should not? Because I know that I see especially young people who get it out of order, like exactly what Brian said, they will focus on that 3 to 5% and allow that to affect their decision making rather than ignoring it and kind of saying, you know what? Doesn't matter what's happening this day, this week, this month, this quarter, I'm going to be okay. Would you agree that that's what happens when young people start on that path too early?
- [14:34]
Austin Hankwitz
Yes, I would agree. I think that a good analogy to think about when it comes to investing, if it's in the stock market in general or a single stock, whatever's going on, is comparing the stock market sort of to a pendulum. It's always way overexcited. Everything's crazy, or it's doom and despair. It's never just in the middle, right. A pendulum swings back and forth, back and forth. And I think to your point of, is it noise, is it crazy? Is it newsworthy? Where we at? Like just all the emotion, right? Cause it's money. Money is emotional. Money is a very emotional thing. And no, I totally agree. I think a lot of people make the mistake of being in that pendulum cycle. Oh, my gosh. Wait, so Amazon spending 200 billion next year, Is that good or is it bad? Wall street thinks it's bad, but they also have like, just back and forth news, like back and forth. It's crazy where if you kind of just take a breath and take a beat here, take a step back, look at it and say, well, we know over a long period of time, the S and P goes up. You know, call it 8 and a half percent, adjusted for inflation. You can say whatever about the, you know, the other indices. I don't know what their specific performances are with the NASDAQ or the Dow Jones, but I'm sure it's up until the. Right. Over a long period of time. Right. So it's, it's just, it's important to discern the difference.
- [15:44]
Bo Hanson
Well, so I think one of the things that we were talking about and I think was this Ruby's idea. Did Ruby come up with this?
- [15:50]
Moderator
I can't take all the credit now. Was team.
- [15:52]
Bo Hanson
This was a team effort. Y' all came up with an idea of a fun little exercise we can walk through to see how good we are at discerning.
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Moderator
Yes. We are going to get to the Q and A soon, so get your questions in the chat. But first we're going to play a little game. It's called News or Noise. So we were just discussing. We see financial headlines all the time. Some of them could be positive, but let's be honest, a lot of them are doom and gloom. Right? A little scary, a little confusing. Maybe. So we are all about cutting through the noise. So we are going to play a game where I will read a real financial headline of the very recent past and you guys will tell me, is it news? Which you have a paddle that you can hold a thumbs up. You should pay attention to this for some reason. Or is it just noise? We don't need to worry too much about that in our personal finance.
- [16:40]
Brian Preston
Any ability. Because I don't like, you know, I like to talk.
- [16:42]
Moderator
Oh, yeah.
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Brian Preston
So is there any editorial feature involved?
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Moderator
You get to tell say why I would challenge you to keep it to 20ish seconds.
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Austin Hankwitz
Cool.
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Moderator
That's our challenge.
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Brian Preston
Okay, 20 seconds.
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Moderator
All right.
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Brian Preston
I feel like there's always this new, this is a new trend where they put, put me especially. They're taking away my filibuster options.
- [17:01]
Moderator
All right, let's dive into the first headline. It says, open AI is unsatisfied with some Nvidia chips and looking for alternatives. Sources say, is this news or noise? Everybody says it's noise. Why do you think it's noise?
- [17:21]
Brian Preston
Well, I mean, unless like I said, I have dear friends that they're all crazy and they've jumped into the Nvidia trend, but I don't personally own that. So that's noise to me because I'm more of buying the market, being part of the market instead of trying to beat the market.
- [17:39]
Austin Hankwitz
I think it's noise because at the end of the day, AI is here to stay. Right? OpenAI is going to be here, but it doesn't matter whose chips they use or whatever, as long as they're making. I mean, a billion people around the world every week use ChatGPT, right? So it doesn't really matter whose chips are used as long as they have good customers and good products.
- [17:58]
Bo Hanson
Yeah, I would say the exact same thing. For me, something that's newsworthy means there's an action or a takeaway I should have from that. When I hear that there's no action for me, I'm not involved with how OpenAI makes their decisions. So I'm going to let them make their decisions and then I'll just get to participate in the broad market.
- [18:15]
Moderator
All right, here's a headline. It says this tech stock just crashed to a 52 week low. Should you buy the dip? Is it news or noise? Everyone says noise again. All right, why do you think it's noise?
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Brian Preston
Here's what's interesting to me. If that would have been The S&P 500 is at A, is at a 52 week low because that would be more of a market market type experience. I have a whole protocol when we hit bare market status to how I think about and I get myself as a financial mutant, excited. But individual tech stock, that's more of a headline to get me to, to, to get my eyeballs than it is for, for action.
- [18:54]
Austin Hankwitz
Took it. Yes, that's exactly. It's an eyeball. It's a, it's a click. It's, it's. Come look at this. It's trading at low. Do you buy. It's. Yeah.
- [19:02]
Moderator
Should you buy the dip or should you always.
- [19:03]
Brian Preston
Well, they never tell you the tech company either.
- [19:06]
Bo Hanson
She said should you buy the dip or should you always be buying? I like buying.
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Moderator
You can use that. Yeah, that was free. Okay.
- [19:14]
Austin Hankwitz
She's fun.
- [19:16]
Moderator
Well, I'm glad we have a lot of fun on these. Okay, next headline is dow ends over 500 points up S&P.500 finishes just shy of a new record after strong January manufacturing data. This one's about the S and P. What do you think, News or noise? All right, let's go.
- [19:36]
Brian Preston
We got a little split here, so let's let Austin go first.
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Moderator
Austin says news. Why do you think it's news, Austin?
- [19:42]
Austin Hankwitz
I think it's news because at the end of the day, if the S and P and the Dow Jones are trading at or near all time highs, that means that the underlying, you know, the economy and the stock market are not the same thing. And I think we all know that. But good news about the economy tends to drive the stock market. And I think it's a newsworthy headline to know that the economy is trending in the right direction. Therefore the stock market seems to be trending in the right direction from this, from this headline. So I think it's, it's, this is something I would click on and I'd read more about. I want to know the January manufacturing data. I'd want to. Okay, cool. This sounds good. I'd actually click on this story.
- [20:17]
Bo Hanson
All right, Bo, I think it's Nick Murray who said, man, if you think that the stock market is high today, wait till you see it ten years from now. And so I think the market, if it truly is a yo, yo, that's going up and down as you go up a mountain. We're always going to be hitting all time highs. So for me, there's nothing actionable in there.
- [20:35]
Brian Preston
Yeah, if you look at the data of bull markets, how long they run versus how short bear markets are, there is a progression where we keep going higher and higher. Nobody knows. Now look, this is. It's important for you to have an allocation that's good before, during and after that reflects your goals and your mix of what you can handle from a risk perspective. Since I'm already assuming since you're a financial mutant, you've checked the box on that. There's nothing actionable I can do from all time highs, whereas it's the inverse of what I said when we hit 20% down. That's a bear market. There is something I can do and think like a contrarian on that, but all time highs because markets run for years. There's nothing for me to do. I don't think I kept up the 20 seconds.
- [21:24]
Moderator
That's all right.
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Austin Hankwitz
I think it's fair.
- [21:26]
Moderator
Good discussion. Next one says Amazon's latest layoffs add fuel to the white collar recession. What do you think, News or noise? Bo says news. Brian says news. Austin.
- [21:38]
Brian Preston
Oh man, I thought, I thought I
- [21:39]
Bo Hanson
was going to be country.
- [21:40]
Brian Preston
I thought we were all be country.
- [21:41]
Bo Hanson
I literally picked that one because I
- [21:42]
Brian Preston
thought I'll let y' all go first again on this one because to see. I bet y' all say the same thing.
- [21:46]
Bo Hanson
Go ahead.
- [21:47]
Austin Hankwitz
I am a firm believer and we just saw this with like open claw over the last couple of weeks. Maybe you guys have seen that or not, but like agentic AI, Robotics, like all like embodied AI is what it's called.
- [21:58]
Brian Preston
Right?
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Austin Hankwitz
This is coming for a lot of white collar and blue collar jobs. And I think between Amazon laying off 30 or 40,000 employees since call it over the last six months. And then you know, we said Dow Inc. They laid off, call it 10, 20,000 employees as well. I think this is newsworthy. I think people need to be paying attention now. Is there an action to take? I don't know. I'm not telling people to take that action. And if that's like that specific, can't wait to hear. But I think like this is something more people should be paying attention to.
- [22:27]
Brian Preston
What do you say the action is? Is that when I read a headline, a headline like this is this, this could be for you to internalize and ask yourself, do I have my own emergency reserves? Am I okay if this thing goes sideways? Because look, when it rains, it pours. When I wrote Millionaire Mission, I shared that and we changed the analogy. And I give Daniel a lot of credit. When Ribe and Daniel and I were brainstorming, we came up with Rains it pours is because I always tried to create this visual where all the bad actors, meaning that the Market gets its teeth kicked in, you go unemployed. It's like all bad news. Hangs out together and smokes cigarettes together. So it's one of those things where you just need to know all these things are likely going to happen at once. So it's a good wake up call for you to internalize that and say, hey, what's going on in my house so I can tend to my own garden so I don't get caught in a bad situation.
- [23:20]
Bo Hanson
Only thing I'll add is I agree. I don't think it's newsworthy for the investment part. I think it's more newsworthy for my vocation. Am I in a place where I need to be thinking about what my future career looks like, what my future opportunities look like? I don't want to ignore that this thing is happening if it could potentially touch my world.
- [23:38]
Moderator
Yeah, that's good stuff. All right, we got a couple more before we head to Q and A.
- [23:41]
Brian Preston
I thought I was contrary on that
- [23:43]
Moderator
and too well, that was fun conversation. Anyway, next is erratic behavior of bitcoin, silver and memory stocks threatens to unnerve the bull market.
- [23:56]
Brian Preston
Whoa.
- [23:57]
Moderator
Okay, we got some more disagreement. Austin and Brian say it's noise. Beau, you say it's news.
- [24:02]
Bo Hanson
Here's why I say that's news. I think that these things are so hot and people are so excited about the cryptos or the silk or the, or the bullion or whatever the thing may be whenever their headlines that show realistically how risky they can be, how much I want people to take note of that and recognize, oh, maybe this is not somewhere where I should allocate my dollars. Maybe this is not something I should be playing with because just because it's gone up into the right for a long, long, long, long time, and just because there was 1000% rate of return over this small fragment of time does not mean that that will persist into the future. So I think it's news because it should be a deterrent from people jumping on the bandwagon at the wrong time for the wrong reasons.
- [24:46]
Brian Preston
So don't do it with eating money.
- [24:47]
Bo Hanson
Don't do with eating money.
- [24:49]
Austin Hankwitz
I think that's totally fair. If we think about like, you know, market cycles and business cycles and things like that, I, I could be wrong here, but how I understand it is when you have these high beta risk on asset classes like a bitcoin or a memory stock, once they start to experience those climax tops and start to come down like, sure, maybe that could be a newsworthy takeaway of like, wow, where could we be in the market cycle or you know, what's ever going on there? But to me it's just, just keep going.
- [25:16]
Bo Hanson
Clicks.
- [25:16]
Moderator
Yeah, that's great. Well, that was fun. I like that we had a little bit of it.
- [25:20]
Brian Preston
Oh come on. I want more of those.
- [25:22]
Moderator
Well, I want to answer some people's questions. Are you okay with this?
- [25:26]
Brian Preston
Let's add some value.
- [25:28]
Moderator
No, I do have some questions queued up for the guys to answer. Also, due to Bone Brian's personal requests, we will be doing a rapid fire segment towards the end of this episode. So if you would like, if you have a question and are watching live and would like it to be answered rapid fire style, go ahead and just write RF at the beginning of your question in the live chat and we will add that to the queue for the rapid fire.
- [25:53]
Brian Preston
Round and kooky wise on what gives this makes it unique is that we're still to keep this at 60 seconds.
- [26:00]
Moderator
Yes.
- [26:01]
Brian Preston
So we're all, we're all math minded people. 60 divided by 3.
- [26:06]
Bo Hanson
20 seconds.
- [26:08]
Moderator
Oh man, you guys will have to work.
- [26:09]
Brian Preston
You saw I failed at it on the first attempt. Let's see what we do on take two.
- [26:13]
Moderator
All right, we're going to start it
- [26:14]
Bo Hanson
off 40, 10 and 10.
- [26:16]
Moderator
You can take a little more time.
- [26:18]
Austin Hankwitz
I feel.
- [26:19]
Brian Preston
Oh, I feel. Did you see I got attacked. There was a mugging that just occurred.
- [26:23]
Bo Hanson
I didn't say you were the 40. I didn't say that.
- [26:25]
Brian Preston
Come on.
- [26:26]
Bo Hanson
Nobody assumed that.
- [26:28]
Moderator
Can neither confirm nor deny. Okay, let's go on to Jake's question. This is not rapid fire. He says, hey, money guy, I'm 24 with no debt. I'm making 130k a year with a 25k emergency fund and 70k invested. That's 50 in tax brokerage and 20 in Roth. I'm wondering if it's okay to move into an apartment that would take 40% of my income. You may want to recap your home buying rules. Guidelines say your housing expenses really shouldn't go beyond 25% of your gross income.
- [27:03]
Brian Preston
You don't want the old man to answer or do y' all want to go jump in first?
- [27:06]
Bo Hanson
I think I'd like to hear the old man answer.
- [27:08]
Moderator
Old man.
- [27:08]
Brian Preston
So. So first of all, Jake, congratulations. You're doing so well. I see so many great. I mean you're bearing fruit. So the, the vine is, is doing a lot of good things right now. But I wonder if you're paying if this is 40% of your income you're trying to Live alone in this swanky place. Go get a roommate. I mean, what happened to us all having roommates until we go get married?
- [27:33]
Austin Hankwitz
And so that's me, six roommates in college.
- [27:35]
Brian Preston
I mean, I love. The more the merrier. I mean, that's what Bo and I joke. I was joking with Bo. Cause he is. I think if we were the same age, we would have ended up being. We were roommates for a little bit. You and your wife were moving up here to Tennessee. Y' all lived with my wife and my family. Old big spoon bow here. But it's. I definitely think that there's. You're doing so much right. I hate to derail that because you're in that stacking stage of letting your army of dollar bills grow. Go get a roommate and all these dreams. Now you're. You're 20% of your income. And that seems completely reasonable.
- [28:08]
Austin Hankwitz
Yeah, I completely agree. I think the most interesting sort of observation about this is I appreciate how Jake is going to focus on renting versus, like, I'm going to go buy a house, I'm going to go put all this money because, like, I'm pretty sure the stats right now is to show it is cheaper to rent and
- [28:24]
Bo Hanson
a lot of places. It is.
- [28:25]
Brian Preston
Yeah.
- [28:25]
Austin Hankwitz
Yeah. Than it is to go buy a house with a massive down payment and figure out, you know, what has to go into that. So, Jake, I love your situation. You're absolutely crushing it for 24 years old, 130,000 a year. You got the emergency fund. That's incredible. Would love to see to their point that 40% turn to 20 or 25 or somewhere in that range if it's a roommate, if it's just a different apartment you don't need. You're 24, dude.
- [28:45]
Brian Preston
What are you living at the Ritz for that. That's what I should have said. I like that analogy.
- [28:50]
Bo Hanson
That's where I was going is. Is why. Because apartment is just renting. It's a short term, short term obligation. Why are you picking a place that's 40%? What's your current rent? What are you paying right now? We have said before that when it comes to buying a home, we do not love it. But we recognize that in some situations, 25% may not be realistic in the homeownership side of things. And maybe you're early in your career, you have a high income trajectory. And so for the moment you might have to be at 28% or 30%, but you know you're going to get married or you know that you're going to have a, an increase in pay or whatever. That's different than, hey, you know what? Right now I can voluntarily and volitionally just go pay 40% of my income in rent. I think that's likely an unforced error in this case. That could be avoided.
- [29:38]
Brian Preston
Go and watch Roadhouse with Patrick Swayze. Not the new updated one that Amazon prime came out with like a year and a half ago. Go watch the original Roadhouse with Patrick Swayze cut out. See if you can find it on tbs because they'll cut out the, the nudity and all the cussing because that version is probably more appropriate for this show. But I want you to note that Patrick Swayze essentially lives in a barn on some land. And, you know, and it's very modest and that. And it's still, he was the coolest cat in town. And that's what you ought to go with. You don't have to have the Ritz Carlton place.
- [30:11]
Bo Hanson
I just think it's hilarious. Like Roadhouse at this point, it's got to be, what, 40, 40 year old?
- [30:16]
Austin Hankwitz
I don't care.
- [30:16]
Brian Preston
But, but I feel like I am educating the, the masses here of the younger generation because they're going to go watch that. Be like, I watched that one with Jake Gyllenhaal or whatever.
- [30:25]
Bo Hanson
Not Connor McGregor.
- [30:26]
Brian Preston
Not the same thing. Connor McGregor. Not the same thing.
- [30:30]
Austin Hankwitz
No. Just to reiterate, though, I think it's, it's so important and I really want to hammer this home as someone who was 24, that was making 65, 70,000 a year in my job, thinking I had made it, and I'm going to go buy this cool car. I'm going to go do this thing. At the expense of maxing out my Roth ira at the expense of having a fully funded emergency fund. I promise you, you're 24. No one cares where you live. No one cares about your apartment. Like, just if you can get over that ego, the faster you can get over, the younger you are, like, you are going to set yourself up.
- [30:58]
Brian Preston
You can still get a significant other living in the Roadhouse Barn.
- [31:02]
Austin Hankwitz
Promise that is going to happen. Yes.
- [31:04]
Brian Preston
Yes. No.
- [31:06]
Moderator
That's good stuff. All right, let's move on to.
- [31:08]
Bo Hanson
Jake didn't even know all the life advice he was going to get right there. He didn't even know what was coming his way.
- [31:12]
Moderator
I was hoping that you guys would have some good guidance.
- [31:15]
Brian Preston
That is, somebody in the comments can tell us, is there a way to watch these classic movies without all the other stuff too Though because I'm sure there's in create technology is probably because Bo and I had tbs. You know, if you grew up in Atlanta, you had the superstation that Ted
- [31:28]
Moderator
Turner have a problem that they've sometimes remember seeing movies on TV and didn't realize all of the content that was cut out of them.
- [31:36]
Brian Preston
Go watch Love Action.
- [31:37]
Moderator
Have this problem.
- [31:38]
Brian Preston
Holy cow, that one will make you blush when if you watch that with the family after you watch it on tbs, it's a different storyline.
- [31:46]
Moderator
It's honestly delightful to see you realize things like this. Okay, we do have another question queued up. If you want to do rapid fire questions, be sure to get those in. Just put RF in front of your question. This next question is called Kelvin 4659. It says I was looking at your slide for what qual qualifies as high interest debt. I noticed that a mortgage was not on the list. What are your thoughts? And just to recap if you're familiar with the foo or the financial order of operations, step three is to knock out that high interest debt. So what do you think?
- [32:21]
Brian Preston
Do we have that slide that the content team can throw up? There's Austin. This is, this is what Kelvin is referring to.
- [32:29]
Austin Hankwitz
And this is a really interesting framework. I appreciate it when people create frameworks and rules like this. And you guys, this is really thoughtful.
- [32:36]
Brian Preston
Yeah, well. But it's, it's even controversial inside of the Money Guy show. But. But it's. We'll save that for another day.
- [32:42]
Bo Hanson
So one his. So Kevin's ultimate question is, hey, I notice you say okay, student loans, if I have that some interest is high, some interest is low. Credit cards is always going to be high interest auto loans, some interest is high, some interest is low. But mortgages were not on the list. And we got this question a lot. A number of years ago when mortgage rates were like seven, seven and a half percent, people would ask hey, is this now step three, if I just bought a house, should I be funneling all my funds? There's. And we kind of said no. We do take this position and this stance that mortgages are likely at least not in our current era. Current stage, high interest debt. Why do we say that, Brian?
- [33:21]
Brian Preston
Because you can refinance and you know, and that's the thing is that there's so many things you ought to be doing with your money in the beginning that it was more of an allocation of resources. And that's what look, I think it's still noble. I think the Austin was spot on though. Is that you do need to be very aware whatever community you look at, is it better to rent versus Own? Because there's still a lot of people out there who have mortgages pre2020 where their interest rates are sub 4%. Their purchase price was a half to. We're getting to the point where 40% of what the market value of things are. So that's why those people who own those houses from that period can have a rent well below where market is. If you had to buy it and you'd be a. Okay. Whereas I don't force it. But. But I do think that if you're in a house, it's okay if that mortgage is 7% for a moment in time. My first house was 6 and 7, 6 and 3 quarters and. And I was able to refinance to down. And I still think there's going to be an opportunity for that in the future. I really do. I'm an optimist towards interest rates coming down.
- [34:25]
Austin Hankwitz
I am too. And I think I just saw that slide for a second. But something I noticed was it was broken down by the specific thing that was financed. And I think there's something to be had. Oh, perfect, it's back on screen. I think there's something to be had here about differentiating between a depreciating asset that's financed and an appreciating asset that's financed. Obviously, you know, the mortgage isn't mentioned here, but that's an appreciating asset in most normal times. Car loans are the opposite. Student loans I guess are kind of the middle because it's your education, your career, things like that. Credit cards are never good to have. I always kind of thought about this too. It's like, what's that perfect rule? There's no perfect rule as it relates to what is high interest debt. But my framework in my mind is like, okay, where's the federal funds rate right now? Three and a half to 4%. Maybe you add 4% on top of that. Call it seven and a half to eight if it's above that, let's get it off, let's pay this off. Where if you're sort of in that, you know, if you have student loans that are around the 5 or 6% range and you're like, okay, well maybe this is something we can talk through or you know, prioritize. You mentioned resourcefulness there and using your different resources in a separate fashion. But yeah, I think, you know, if it's above 7, 8, 9, I don't care what it is pay it off man. You don't need double digit interest rate debt.
- [35:33]
Brian Preston
But you do. And look, I hate to put you on the spot Austin, but if you have a seven and a half percent or 8%, let's just say it's 8% mortgage or like you did a piggyback loan and you have your second mortgage is eight, eight and a half percent. Would you do pay that down before you funded your Roth ira?
- [35:49]
Austin Hankwitz
No, no, I'd fund that.
- [35:51]
Brian Preston
The rules, that's what had a lot
- [35:53]
Bo Hanson
of internal decisions, assets. It's an appreciable asset. You were saying it probably doesn't apply, but appreciable it does. I do think one thing that's really interesting that I've started paying a little bit of attention to and now we have to rewind like almost 10 years before this was like a thing. But we used to do these analysis for folks when they would go to buy their home. We would look at a 30 year mortgage versus a 15 year mortgage. And there was at that time there were some compelling circumstances where okay, if I go get a 30 year mortgage at 6 and a half percent, but I do a 15 year mortgage at 5% or 4 and a half then that might be a compelling trade off if the rates are that much more attractive. Depending on where you are in your financial journey and what your age is, I do think if rates kind of persist where they are now, we may begin to see more of a spread between 30 years and 15 years. What happened over the last decade is they converged so close that there just wasn't a really compelling reason to look at 15 year mortgages. I think if we stay at this level we're going to start to see more spread there likely. So it's something to pay attention to. But again, I still love 30 year mortgages. They give you a lot of flexibility. Especially if this is your first time home purchase early on in your financial journey.
- [37:07]
Brian Preston
Yeah.
- [37:07]
Bo Hanson
But if you are buying that second home upgrading, trading up, I don't think it's crazy. If the rate differential and don't sleep
- [37:13]
Brian Preston
on the fact go through our Checklist, go to moneyguide.com resources because you also need to make sure you go through the other elements. We're talking about the component of interest rates and financing terms. But how long are you going to stay in the house? There's a lot of elements and we give you the checklist of all the things you need to be considering.
- [37:30]
Austin Hankwitz
Yeah, I mean we hear this phrase all the time. Personal finance is personal and you are the only person that can make those decisions for yourself. And it's our jobs to give them the tools and resources and educate them. But at the end of the day they're the ones that have to make those decisions. Love it.
- [37:44]
Moderator
All right, next question is from Brandon H. It says hi team. Should I take out a 25k loan at 2.99% interest rate for investing in a long term brokerage account? I'm 29 on step 7 or 8 of the foo 95k salary trying to build a house in true 2 to 3 years. Is this a good idea? I can see that.
- [38:08]
Austin Hankwitz
Where are you getting a $25,000 loan at 3%? First off, that's interesting.
- [38:12]
Bo Hanson
Yeah.
- [38:12]
Austin Hankwitz
What?
- [38:15]
Brian Preston
Here's the thing. I would also he left off how long is it locked in at that point? 9 9. And then I'm always a little leery especially when I find out somebody is making close to 100 grand. I think there is more benefit and dividends to figuring out how you get your Savings rate to 20, 25% as fast as possible. So you can make it automatic for the people always be buying. I don't like gimmicks like this because usually this is the same thing as on our previous question where it was talking about credit cards because financial mutants, we all think we're so smart. We say but the credit card Companies offer me 0% on my credit cards right now. And I'm like yeah, and I said it earlier and I'll say it again. The dope man gives you that first hit for free because they're trying to get you hooked and then they're hoping that you fall off into the ditch and you have an addiction and you're doing it all wrong. It's the same way with debt. And I always worry these introductory offers the same way you go fill your house full of furniture and they won't even make you pay interest for five years according to the commercials. But then if you go read the fine print you find out if you have any hiccup, they're waiting there like the grim reaper to just take you down. I would rather you focus on the positive behavior that doesn't require debt than trying to count on some introductory offer and leveraging up right off the get go. I always leverage when I get into residential rental property and things like that. That's more of a step of the financial order of operations than somebody who's 29 years old trying to leverage to get an arbitrage built.
- [39:50]
Austin Hankwitz
And I think to add on top of that Brandon something. And again, maybe you are insanely disciplined and this is not going to take place in your situation. But if I was a betting man, I would bet if. If you were to go borrow this $25,000 at a 3% interest rate, you might get a little weird about how this money is invested. You're going to see it go up and down. Oh, my gosh. No, wait, so you know, oh, my gosh, how much? What's my payment? It's down a little bit, so I'm losing money.
- [40:17]
Brian Preston
Should I pay it back?
- [40:17]
Austin Hankwitz
Do I sell it early? Like, I think that you're going to get really emotional even if you did this. So in my. Don't do this, dude. Literally, go find to your point, Brian, that 20 to 25% in your budget. Go invest that. Go, you know, do everything you're supposed to do. And do not build. Wealth is not built at this early stage on debt. It's built on discipline.
- [40:39]
Bo Hanson
My question is why? Here's some things I know about you, Brandon. You make $95,000 a year. You're 29 years old, and you've already said that you're in step seven or eight, which tells me you're saving 25% for your future. Why lever that up? Why take on more risk than absolutely necessary? I was trying to think of an analogy and I came up with a dumb one that doesn't work real well, but I'm going to say it, but because I can. If I don't put my seatbelt on when I get in my car, technically I can get to my destination faster. I don't have to worry about buckling. I don't have to take it off. But is the marginal increase in speed at which I will arrive at my destination by not doing that worth the risk that I'm going to take on? Absolutely not. We're talking about small sums. If you are already saving and already doing the thing that you want to do, you're basically, you're not exactly rounding third. Almost home. But, man, you were far along in the base path at this point. Why do you want to start showboating and adding risk unnecessarily? That could likely more than likely derail your plan unnecessarily.
- [41:48]
Brian Preston
So what I love about doing a live show is that we have in your Brandon's out in the audience and has gave us more context. This is a loan for military officers. So thank you. Thank you for your service. Exactly.
- [42:00]
Austin Hankwitz
Thank you.
- [42:03]
Brian Preston
I still. I don't think it's necessary. You Know, this is, this is one of those things where it intrigues you, the financial mutant inside of you, but this isn't where your wealth is necessarily. This isn't the foundation block for it. It's really, it's exactly what Austin said. It's the discipline of setting up those automatic for the people type behaviors that is going to take you to the next level, you know, because that's the other thing. As a military officer, I don't know, you know, I don't know what you have going on in your house. You didn't say you had kids. I don't think they had kids. They weren't trying to do other things. So you probably already have your own arbitrage situation. Is that your. Your housing subsidized and other things. I bet you can get to 20, 25% even.
- [42:42]
Bo Hanson
Yeah, he said he was in step seven and eight. He said he's already there.
- [42:45]
Brian Preston
So that's why I think this is something that you look back, you go, what? Just because you can doesn't mean you should. On the. There's a lot of things for financial mutants that you learn that is that it's, it's reminds me of, you know, the siren song, go do this. You know, because it's not really going to make your life any better.
- [43:05]
Moderator
No, that's great. Thank you for all the questions. We love hearing what's on your mind. So keep them coming. And right now we are going to keep them coming, but even faster. It is time for our it does not depend Rapid Fire segment. So the rule of this segment are all three of you combined have 60 seconds to answer the question and you cannot use the words it depends. So that's one of the rules, Austin, because they struggle with that. They like.
- [43:31]
Brian Preston
So personal finance ain't personal on this one.
- [43:33]
Austin Hankwitz
Okay, here we go.
- [43:34]
Brian Preston
It's absolute.
- [43:35]
Moderator
Their consolation prize is that at the end of the Rapid fire we will have our maybe it does depend segment where you can air any grievances or add to what you. You didn't get to say during Rapid Fire. If you so please.
- [43:49]
Austin Hankwitz
I'm so excited.
- [43:50]
Brian Preston
Do we have a non. Do we have like the non rights? Because we can't play Eye of the Tiger. Never mind, keep going. Just visualize.
- [44:02]
Bo Hanson
You want a soundtrack.
- [44:04]
Brian Preston
Don't, don't, don't. That probably doesn't.
- [44:06]
Bo Hanson
We're not getting trouble for that.
- [44:07]
Brian Preston
We don't get sued for that. Now we're ready.
- [44:09]
Moderator
You do this thing as much as you want.
- [44:11]
Austin Hankwitz
Okay?
- [44:11]
Brian Preston
For the record, look, you don't Want to mess. I learned at an early age. Crosby, Stills and Ash and Young. You don't. You don't use music on your podcast. They get you. But you can. You can do.
- [44:22]
Moderator
All right, here we go. First rapid fire question. Why can't Roth funds be used as an emergency fund?
- [44:31]
Bo Hanson
Because they're for retirement.
- [44:33]
Austin Hankwitz
Yep,
- [44:36]
Brian Preston
technically they can.
- [44:39]
Austin Hankwitz
But you shouldn't, because you already have an emergency fund. The point of the emergency fund is to ensure that you are, one, not swiping a credit card and two, not cashing out money that's already invested for you in your retirement accounts. Right. So, no, you already have an emergency fund. You're good. You don't need to go cash out your Roth ira, principal. Yeah, whatever. It's like, you know, pull it out without, you know, penalties. I get that. But at the end of the day, you already have an emergency fund for this.
- [45:02]
Brian Preston
I felt like we did this like the Dapper Dance. I mean, because we didn't take our times. It's just like one of us played the bass, one of us was the alto. Like, no, this is. What this is how we did is.
- [45:13]
Bo Hanson
That's acapella group.
- [45:14]
Brian Preston
Yeah. Down at Disney, if you go. If you're on Main street in Magic Kingdom, you'll see the Dapper Dan's.
- [45:19]
Austin Hankwitz
I've never done the drink around the world at Epcot. I just did that last year. It was a lot of fun.
- [45:24]
Bo Hanson
I have drank. I have not done drink, drink around.
- [45:27]
Brian Preston
Not all at once. I'm not all at once. But I've seen. I've been in Epcot enough that I see the people wearing the shirt that on to display are letting us know, hey, be careful of us because we're drinking around the world.
- [45:39]
Moderator
Love it.
- [45:39]
Austin Hankwitz
For the record, I was not wearing one of those shirts.
- [45:42]
Brian Preston
You should have if I was going to do it.
- [45:44]
Austin Hankwitz
I need a shirt.
- [45:44]
Brian Preston
No.
- [45:45]
Moderator
I have heard people, a lot of
- [45:46]
Austin Hankwitz
people say, where's it going? Construction shirts.
- [45:47]
Brian Preston
Hey, when we do our money guy takeover of Disney, we'll all have some shirts.
- [45:53]
Moderator
Good to know.
- [45:54]
Bo Hanson
But I have not rapid.
- [45:56]
Brian Preston
No, no, here's the thing. If I did it though, we would all like. We would do half drinks. You share drinks, everybody pairs up to a buddy.
- [46:04]
Austin Hankwitz
Yeah, no, that's what my fiancee and I did.
- [46:06]
Brian Preston
See, look at that.
- [46:07]
Bo Hanson
See, that's the responsible way.
- [46:08]
Austin Hankwitz
That's how you get through it. If you don't do it that way
- [46:10]
Brian Preston
to do it, love it that way. You can cap it off with Guardians of the Galaxy at the end of the night.
- [46:15]
Moderator
All Right. Want to get back to some rapid fire. Next one is with an 8 year age gap, 26 and 34, what ages do you use planning for retirement?
- [46:29]
Austin Hankwitz
Wait, do you use retirement?
- [46:31]
Brian Preston
Oh, man.
- [46:32]
Moderator
All right, so said it.
- [46:36]
Brian Preston
The easy answer is the oldest person's. Okay.
- [46:39]
Austin Hankwitz
Oh, I understand the question now. Yeah, no, that makes a lot of
- [46:42]
Brian Preston
sense because that's gonna be the most conservative answer because it makes time happen faster. So that's gonna be the easy answer is base it off the old person.
- [46:49]
Bo Hanson
And they're specifically asking what number to use for retirement, not how to calculate, like any of the formulas, like where they are, average accumulator, any of that kind of stuff.
- [46:59]
Brian Preston
We can come back to the it depends section and I have a lot more feedback. But I can give you the oldest person if you need an on the cuff answer.
- [47:06]
Moderator
It's not abundantly clear. Bo, they were asking me the question one more time with an eight year age gap, 26 and 34, that what ages do you use for planning for retirement?
- [47:15]
Bo Hanson
Oh, yeah.
- [47:16]
Moderator
So I think it kind of encompasses a lot.
- [47:18]
Brian Preston
The, the, it's really more of the person's age than what's the date of the actual return?
- [47:22]
Bo Hanson
That's right. Hey, we want to retire in 30 years.
- [47:26]
Moderator
Great. Look at that. 60. 60 seconds is too long. You guys better. We're going to spin up a lot of challenges on this, I think, in the future. Next question says, what age or amount of money should you have before consulting a financial advisor? Follow up, how do you find a good financial advisor?
- [47:47]
Austin Hankwitz
I'm not going to step on any
- [47:48]
Brian Preston
toes greater than $500,000. And you go to moneyguy.com and go to work with, with us.
- [47:56]
Bo Hanson
Yep, I love all those things. The only thing I'll add to that slightly is it depends on what kind of service.
- [48:00]
Brian Preston
You just said it. You just said it. You just said it. Let me jump in then.
- [48:05]
Austin Hankwitz
Here's, here's, here are my quick thoughts. I, I think a lot of people make the mistake of thinking they need 10,000, 50,000, $100,000 to get started with investing. You don't. You can start with $10. You can start with maxing out your Roth IRA, contributing to your employer's 401k. Right. Things of that nature. But I think when it comes to a financial advisor, in my humble opinion, the biggest, beyond just them helping you with strategy, help they can provide is the emotional sort of support that comes with investing in the stock market, which goes up, down, left, right, and in circles over a long period of time. They're going to keep you in the markets for longer.
- [48:39]
Brian Preston
Look, I've tried to keep this as simple as possible while your life is simple. Come to us when your life gets complicated. It will with success. Then you know you've graduated.
- [48:47]
Moderator
I gave you three extra seconds.
- [48:49]
Brian Preston
I know. We'll come back to that one.
- [48:50]
Bo Hanson
I have failed every time we've done rapid fire. Every single time I have screwed it up.
- [48:56]
Brian Preston
You know how good would be if we did that shot collar thing? It would have been so good, and we. Maybe even give me the button.
- [49:03]
Bo Hanson
Do not give him the shot collar button.
- [49:06]
Moderator
No, if we do that, I get the button.
- [49:07]
Austin Hankwitz
Every time you get a new subscriber, it just kind of gives you that.
- [49:10]
Brian Preston
Oh, man.
- [49:10]
Austin Hankwitz
Everyone's gonna just.
- [49:12]
Moderator
All right, let's do a few more rapid fire before we have our, you know, discussion time at the end. What age or amount of money should you have? Oh, I just read that one.
- [49:23]
Brian Preston
Shoot.
- [49:23]
Bo Hanson
All right, I'd like to take this one.
- [49:26]
Moderator
You don't get another chance. Morning. Currently in step five of foo when trying to build wealth with a spouse, is there a way to combine accounts to optimize compound interest? What's the ideal for a couple to do?
- [49:45]
Austin Hankwitz
Go ahead.
- [49:46]
Bo Hanson
Compound interest will say the same whether your accounts are together or not together. That's where the mathematics work. If you have two $100,000 accounts or one $200,000 accounts, the math is the same. Now, what's the optimal strategy?
- [50:02]
Brian Preston
No, no, you definitely use the financial order of operations. Use the financial order of operations because one spouse might have a. Just kick in 401k. That allows you to maximize step six in a really good way. So you load that up. Both of you probably want to have Roth IRAs, but you have to make sure you have the right account structure. That's why the financial order of operations is the all terrain vehicle to get you there.
- [50:28]
Austin Hankwitz
100%. Yeah. I think just as someone who's getting married in May of 2027, I can't wait to. Congratulations. Thank you so much. Can't wait to combine my finances with my spouse. And it's going to be. It's going to be awesome. That is how people build wealth.
- [50:42]
Brian Preston
Can I ask Austin a question? This is just. This is a trend.
- [50:46]
Bo Hanson
Yes. 60 seconds to answer.
- [50:47]
Brian Preston
This is a trend. It doesn't have to be, but I've noticed all my friends who are getting. Because I have a lot of friends who have adult children getting married now. When I got. When I dropped the ring. When I did the ring with My wife, it set a clock for six months. But I notice all marriages now are over a year now. I've heard this weekend from a dear friend. Like, the venues are booked even for over a year now. So is that what's going on? I'm just curious why trends are. I'm just an old school guy.
- [51:16]
Austin Hankwitz
No, it's funny. I don't mean to get weird, but yeah. So I got engaged June 4, 2025. My dad died July of 25. And so it was pause on all wedding planning.
- [51:28]
Brian Preston
I get that.
- [51:29]
Austin Hankwitz
And then In October of 2025, it was, let's go think about the wedding. And the only types of venues that were available were ones we just really didn't want. Or they were available on 9, 11 of this year, which is a Saturday or Halloween. I didn't want to get married on either of those days.
- [51:48]
Bo Hanson
Too hard.
- [51:48]
Austin Hankwitz
So then I slipped it through the venue.
- [51:50]
Brian Preston
You see what a growth opportunity it is to go open up a wedding.
- [51:54]
Austin Hankwitz
Really?
- [51:54]
Brian Preston
Because that's what I've heard the same thing from dear friends.
- [51:57]
Austin Hankwitz
And so then I flipped it forward to the spring of 27. May 8th is when we're gonna get married. And it was like the last day at this venue. It was that or it was Juneteenth. Like there are like. Some of these venues are really, really in high demand. Yeah.
- [52:11]
Bo Hanson
You were only engaged for six months. Yeah, I was a year. We were almost a year to the day. How long were you engaged for?
- [52:17]
Moderator
Oh, I was short. We were like four or five months. I'm weird.
- [52:20]
Bo Hanson
None of my friends.
- [52:23]
Moderator
None of my friends were like young body.
- [52:25]
Brian Preston
I thought.
- [52:27]
Bo Hanson
I thought like, one year was pretty common.
- [52:29]
Moderator
Yeah. In my circles, anyway. I don't know.
- [52:31]
Brian Preston
Okay, thank you all for going on that sidebar. I blew up.
- [52:34]
Moderator
I know. Not financial. Just talking. I guess it is. Weddings are financial. We could go.
- [52:39]
Austin Hankwitz
Weddings are very financial.
- [52:40]
Bo Hanson
Yes.
- [52:43]
Brian Preston
There's a whole industry that makes money off of those emotions.
- [52:47]
Moderator
Yes.
- [52:47]
Austin Hankwitz
Oh, goodness.
- [52:48]
Moderator
Yeah. No. When you're only engaged for four or five months, the limit. The venue is very limited, which I didn't totally mind, to be honest. I was just like, whatever is available.
- [52:57]
Brian Preston
I'm from south Atlanta. Let me tell you, those venues, they make it happen.
- [53:01]
Bo Hanson
Plenty of venues
- [53:04]
Brian Preston
demand.
- [53:04]
Moderator
Let's do a few more rapid fires before we close this out. It says, I'm at Foo. Step five completed. Working towards steps com food. Step five completed. Working towards step six. But the car payment is $935 at 4.74 apron. And that I didn't use the 238 rule to buy. Should I start paying this thing off or consider it low interest at age 31?
- [53:33]
Bo Hanson
You didn't take good notes.
- [53:35]
Brian Preston
I know usually we get stuff on there, but I know I would really
- [53:38]
Austin Hankwitz
want to know how much you still owe on this car. Obviously. Foo, go check that out. Make sure you follow everything they share with Foo. I think it's an incredible roadmap. But at the end of the day, if you're going to have a ton of money you owe, I think, on this car, and you already have that sitting in cash and maybe like a bridge account, a taxable brokerage account, something of that nature, and you can say, hey, I'm not going to. I mean, you're. I'm going to free up $1,000 a month by paying this off a little bit early. I'm all here. I'm here for that.
- [54:06]
Bo Hanson
I would do the math to recalculate. What would it take to get this inside of 23 8? So based on the interest rate, I think you said 4.75% based on $935 a month payment. If. Based on when I bought it, if I wanted to get it inside of the 238 structure, what would the mathematics for that look like?
- [54:26]
Brian Preston
I was going to say get it back within 23. 8. Go back and do the exercise. But what I loved there was Bo's Micro machines voice. I mean, he. I was. Did you hear how he sped it up? I was like, man, oh, man, if you're running that at double speed, it's cooking the chipmunks.
- [54:41]
Moderator
All right, let's do one more. This is. Is fun. 1 Favorite Finance books in addition to Millionaire Mission, because that is our favorite.
- [54:49]
Brian Preston
There we go. Let's go.
- [54:51]
Bo Hanson
You go first.
- [54:52]
Austin Hankwitz
Sure. I will say 100 Baggers by Christopher Mayer is a great book. I really like the Little Book of Common Sense Investing by John C. Bogle. And I also enjoy Millionaire Next Door.
- [55:08]
Bo Hanson
You go.
- [55:09]
Brian Preston
I mean, everybody knows mine because I always say the two books that shaped me initially were Wealthy Barber and the Millionaire Next Door. And that's why I love what I did with Millionaire Mission is because I felt like I kind of paid respect to both of those powerful books because I gave you not a narrative form like Wealthy Barber, but I definitely walked you through my life story and how I've kind of came across financial order of operations and. But then I put in the analytics of the Millionaire Next Door.
- [55:37]
Austin Hankwitz
Yeah.
- [55:38]
Bo Hanson
Millionaire Mission, how to Win Friends and Influence People.
- [55:41]
Brian Preston
I try to say that's a good One too.
- [55:43]
Bo Hanson
Even though it doesn't seem like it's a financial book, it absolutely will impact your financial life if you take what that book says to heart.
- [55:50]
Austin Hankwitz
Great time. Look at that.
- [55:51]
Brian Preston
I didn't think I left you much time. I only left him like 16.
- [55:54]
Moderator
You didn't. Yeah.
- [55:55]
Brian Preston
So well done.
- [55:55]
Moderator
All right, we have now come to the end of our it does not depend rapid fire segment. So let's go back. I took notes now said it depends a couple times, both. So what do you want to set the record straight?
- [56:06]
Bo Hanson
Well, let's go in order. First, anything to add to the age to retire? There's a 26 year old, 34 year old. How do I decide on retirement age? Austin, you said you had some stuff.
- [56:14]
Austin Hankwitz
I did. I just wanted to add real quick. I appreciate them doing this breakdown of trying to figure out, you know, whose sort of path and all that fun stuff. But I also think a fun exercise would be trying to figure out we all know what the 4% rule is. I think a fun exercise would be trying to figure out your freedom number and by how quickly you can achieve that. Right? So maybe there's a world where you can retire at 48 or 52 or 56 before you tap into these retirement accounts. And so just taking the time there to say, okay, you know, how much wealth can we build in a 10, 15, 20, 25 year period of time here? What is the 4% rule look like in this? Do we have it in the right accounts where we can touch this penalty free? I think thinking about it holistically, not just having a age here, age here, and who should we kind of think about is a great way to approach it. And also if you guys are married, it's like everyone's money. So it's not like, oh, this person has money in this account. I mean, it's think about it as a unit.
- [57:08]
Brian Preston
When I'm doing financial planning, one of my favorite things that I like that we do for clients is that you'll see a key dates page, especially when you're doing retirement planning. And we'll have, you know, for both the. Both spouses will have dates of access, but we also have the dates that they each plan on retiring. And you can kind of start very quickly seeing where the intersection points are with Social Security with, you know, 59 and a half, 55, if they're part of a 401k. That's what I love about doing a plan is because you kind of start seeing all the movable pieces and you make a dream into an actual actionable plan.
- [57:48]
Bo Hanson
I love that I've got nothing to add to those two. Those are great. The next question though was, and I got some thoughts on this. I know you do. When should I hire a financial advisor and how do I find one?
- [57:59]
Moderator
I was like, this is my question.
- [58:01]
Bo Hanson
What I was going to say is it depends on what you're looking for. Because not all financial advisors are created equal and not all services they provide are the same. Are you looking for something that's like a one time transactional thing? Are you looking for just investment management? Are you looking for like a more total view of your financial life to make sure all the pieces fit together? Because at different pieces, parts and stages of your financial journey, you might be looking for one of those things. So first you need to define what am I looking for? And then you can decide, okay, well, based on what I'm looking for, I'm at the stage where that makes sense. I love what Brian said. If you're someone who's looking for like a holistic look at your entire financial picture, understand all the parts and pieces of your life fit together. We usually see that start to make sense Once someone has 500, $600,000 of investable assets and some complexity in their life where they're like, man, I just don't know the things that I don't know. Now there are other people earlier on in the journey and in our opinion is there's tons of free resources and blogs and podcasts and all kinds of things out there that are amazing resources. You can do it yourself, but some people want something slightly more than do it yourself. And there are solutions out there available that bridge that gap between, okay, I'm going to do it myself and okay, I'm ready for like the full holistic view of my life. And so you have to figure out where you are and what you're looking for. In terms of how to find that. We have a great resource on the website. If you go to moneyguide.com resources, it's eight questions to ask your financial advisor. No matter what type of advisor you're thinking about, you should ask them these questions. Hey, how do you get paid? What are your conflicts of interest? How do I know you know what you're talking about? Because you want to make sure once you've defined what it is you're looking for, that the person on the other side of the table has set up to deliver that thing that you're looking for. So it's a free resource. Go out there, check that out and use that as sort of like an interview guide as you're having these conversations.
- [59:56]
Austin Hankwitz
I absolutely love that. Because to your point, unfortunately, there are financial advisors out there that are predatory. If it's with their fees, or maybe they're not fiduciaries, like, a lot. They get paid on the back end by different types of funds that they recommend. Right. There's a lot of little things that people don't understand as it relates to how some of these financial advisors get compensated and then why they're wanting to put you in specific products. But I could not agree more. And I think it's really interesting. I want to get Yalls perspective on this. As you know, you all are doing this. We've seen companies that are offering. You mentioned the transactional stuff, right. For $250 an hour, a fiduciary will sit down with you and sort of go through the motions. Or I think, you know, I'm not going to name the name of the company because they're not sponsoring. But, you know, there's companies out there that will, you know, hi, give us 3,000. We'll give you a whole financial picture, like, things like that. So how. How is that. Is this a new trend you guys are seeing? Because you guys have been in the space a lot longer than I have.
- [60:48]
Brian Preston
Look, there's been disruptors. And it's just kind of the same thing with what's going on with AI right now, too. Is everybody. First it was the hourly advisors are going to replace you, and then it was the robo advisors are going to replace you. Now everybody talks about AI at the end of the day, for me, it comes down to the execution of the planning because it's easy to create a somewhat coherent plan. It's another thing to actually turn a plan into the execution of something that creates meaningful change in people's life. And I was having a conversation with another advisor yesterday. Rivi was on that call with me, too, and we were talking about it. He was like, yeah, it's the same thing. That's what. Because we were kind of talking about trends that are going on. He's like, I had a wire transfer that it was like 10 calls to make sure this wasn't a crooked transaction. And I think about how we have to massage the paperwork for so many of our clients on how you do key transactions when you're consolidating health savings accounts and when you're doing Roth conversions, when you're actually reviewing the tax returns for clients before they hit the file. This because you might know, you, the advisor might know more about the investment transactions or the interaction of all the investment income with IRMAA or Social Security than even the tax preparer does. So all those things kind of come into play. So it's back to the execution now maybe we get to the point. But I get excited. I even have an optimist, I'm just a natural optimist that I think even if this thing can do execution down the road, I think that just means that now we can service more people. Because right now, my restrictions as a financial advisor, that's one everybody picks on, especially us who choose the relationship side of things through Aum. I would say you have to realize we really do adhere to the Dunbar principle, that humans just can only handle so many relationships well. And I can only work with so many people in my time. We have more people that want to work with us than we can actually do. So we have to put governors on how we structure that. So I get excited from the technology standpoint, if something allowed us to actually reach more people, yeah, maybe that compresses the cost to some degree, which even opens it up from a cost, you know, if it's supply, demand, if we. And the pricing of, the flexibility of all that, the malleability of all that stuff. I get excited that we're not even seeing what could be. We're all thinking about the destruction. When I see that there potentially could be access to more people. Because my goal always has been with this show is to be an educator and see if we can get more people making better decisions. So I get excited. That's why we can just give it away. I remember I've been doing this so long that you should know. When I first started going to conferences, this is probably 2009, 2010, and I'd go at these conferences and other financial advisors, be like, you're just giving it away. Aren't you scared that that's hurting you for radical transparency? Yeah. And I'm like, no. I was like. Because I just. I think that this is. The education is so powerful. We can. And I know that the complexity is going to be there in what we're sharing. So I've never been burned by being super generous and having this optimist mindset. And I think that we'll be okay. And plus the sense of community. You guys know every. You come here every Tuesday because you know that financial mutants are different. And we're leaning into how we can expand that community element even more because we want you guys to be able to connect. We want you to be able to connect with us. And that's something that no machine is ever going to be able to replace is how do we all get together and feel that human element that makes it so special?
- [64:22]
Austin Hankwitz
Love that.
- [64:23]
Moderator
Love it. No, I do. This has been really awesome. Thank you so much for joining us. Every Tuesday at 10am Central. We'll be back next Tuesday. And until then, make sure you check out moneyguy.com because we have tons of free resources, calculators and articles all going deeper on things that we discussed today and more. So moneyguy.com Austin, thanks for being with us today.
- [64:46]
Brian Preston
If anybody wants to know about your stuff, lay it out there.
- [64:48]
Moderator
Yeah, where can they find you?
- [64:49]
Austin Hankwitz
Every Monday, Thursday and Friday, Friday we're publishing new episodes of the Rich Habits Podcast on Spotify, on YouTube, on Apple. Go check out the Rich Habits Network, a place for our biggest fans to have extra coursework. Have, you know, participate in weekly live streams that my co host and I have. Go check out Gritcap IO, which is the URL of my newsletter called Rate of Return. And just check out Austin Hankw on the Internet.
- [65:14]
Brian Preston
Yeah, guys, we have a blast. I think you can see.
- [65:17]
Austin Hankwitz
Thanks everyone. So fun. Yeah, this is great. Can't wait to do it again.
- [65:20]
Brian Preston
This is a lot of fun. I'm your host, Brian, joined by Bo and Austin Riebe, rest of the content team. Moneyguy Out.
- [65:30]
Bo Hanson
The moneyguy show is hosted by Bryan Preston and Bo Hanson. Brian and Bo are partners with Abound Wealth Management. Abound Wealth Management is a registered investment advisory firm regulated by the securities and Exchange Commission. In accordance and compliance with the securities laws and regulations, Abound Wealth Management does not render or offer to render personalized investment or tax advice through the Money Guy Show. The information provided is for informational purposes only, may not be suitable for all investors, and does not constitute financial, tax, investment or legal advice. All investments involve a degree of risk, including the risk of loss.